Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-09-10
THE SHY
Will They Disappear When Women Sinai
Have Become Wage-Earners.

Will They Disappear When Women Sinai
Have Become Wage-Earners.
The shy graces" are dealt with
in Harper's Bazaar as follows:
The question is sometimes asked, and
even reformers occasionally ask it Of
themselves, what is to become, in the
years when women are educated ut col
lege and cmancipated from control, of
the shy graces that adorned the savage
womanp There is a certain delicate
charm that seems historically INSOFAR
able from a humble ard subordinate
condition. We find it ia the uncivil-
lied woman everywhere, among the
rudcst Cossacks or H~ottentots. Who
that has seen q tribe of Indians un-
touched by contact with the white man
can fail to recall the modest bearing,
the downcast eyes, the low and must
cal voices of the younger girlsp In
higher grades of civilization the same
type is often visible in girls bred in
toifGHts vi ptitsitH Soitc kiutfEu It
ligious rule. The whole aim of chaper-
onage in society is to prolong or coun-
terfeit this tradition; the very name of
'.bud" implies something modest, half
closed, untouched. Will not the very
tradition OF that charming sweetness
disappear when the young woman goes
to n public school, is educated at a coll
lege and fills some subsequent post of
duty, as it may happen, before the pub
lie eyeP
The answer is best to be found, per-
haps, in the personal observation of
each one. Spenser says of the three
Graccs of ancient mythology:
These three on men all gracious gifts bestow
Which deck the body or adorn the mind.
To make them lovely or well-favored show,
and every one finds these graces in his
wv circle of friends or kindred or
early acquaintances, as the painter
Palma Vecchie drew them from his
own daughters in his picture at Dress
den. No one would be willing to &C.
knowledge that the women he has
known and loved the best are inferior
to those Of other lands or times. Or that
they needed repression or s~eclusion TO
make them more satisfactory. Again.
the charm OF the savage or the re-
pressed type is something that is apt
TO be temporary; the maiden child in
the wild tribe becomes in later years
the drudge, the rome or the virago;
the demure and subdued girl of French
or Italian society may become the art
ful wife or the intriguing old roman
If we are to love the shy graces of
character they must be something that
is ingram and permanent; that adorns
the young, yet desrts not the old; they
must be essential graces of woman
hood, not Of childhood or girlhood
alone. II we substitute 8 claim that is
p~erishable at any rate it matters little
how it goes. 1t may better go. indeed,
for some good purpose, if at all.
Tried by these graces, we soon dis
cover that all shy graces which 60
| deeply into the nature are confined to
no age, and indeed to neither sex taken
separately. They lie in refinement of
feeling. in true modesty, in sweetness
of nature, in gentleness of spirit. These
are those "angelic manner and celes-
tial charms" Of which Petrarch writes,
and of which he says that the very
memory saddens while it delights.
since it makes all other possessions APP
pear trivial.